Event details

It’s Joseph meets Godspell meets Hamilton meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail meets your community just in time for the 500th Anniversary of the stormy monk nailing it this October.

It’s two-time John Lesson Songwriting Contest winners music meets a 3D graphic set that looks like it came right out of Marvel Comics meets an historically fascinating and accurate script.

It's adults, teens, elders, children and a few strays snatched off the street working, bonding, singing, creating, laughing and learning together. It’s a true Cross+Generational community converging around a theater production that will raise money to support bakeries in Aleppo, Syria, subsistence coffee farmers around the world and families in need in your own community.

It’s Luther the Rock Opera and its coming to a stage near you this fall in time for 900 million Protestants world-wide to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of one solitary monk who changed the world.

Leaping from the pages of an internationally acclaimed graphic novel “Luther” by Dr. Rich Melheim, Luther the Rock Opera tells the story of a young monk’s quest for peace with God. It starts with the burning of martyr Jan Hus 100 years before Luther and his haunting prediction: “In 100 years I will answer!” It jumps through time to Luther’s electric-shock call. Then it marches with the protesting professor to the Wittenberg Door, a heretic’s trial and his late-night kidnapping. In the end through a series of improbable historical events, our unlikely hero moves to and through the three words that usher the Medieval Era out and the Modern Era in: “Here I stand!”

Luther the Rock Opera is a story for every time. A story for all time. A story for your time. And come this fall, it will be told again for the first time - in song and comic book art for a generation that doesn’t know much about history.

ORIGINS

Luther the Rock Opera began in 2003 as a graphic novel written by Dr. Rich Melheim and illustrated by Jonathan Koelsch and Sherwin Schwartzrock in support of the guerrilla marketing efforts for the Luther feature film starring Joseph Fiennes, Alfred Molina and Peter Ustinov. As the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation approached, Melheim invited his friends Michael Bridges and George Baum from the award-winning band Lost And Found to partner in turning the graphic novel into a musical stage play.

INTERNATIONAL CHARITY FOCUS

The play opened at the Stadthaus Theater in Wittenberg, Germany, June 25 before an audience of 650 fans. It is being practiced and prepped for October performances on large and small stages across the globe. Proceeds will help support local charities chosen by each troupe, plus specific emergency aid projects through Lutheran World Relief (www.lwr.org/luthertherockopera).